White House Insists Trump’s Immigration Ban Isn’t a Ban

Sean Spicer answering questions from press at a press conference on January 31, 2017.

By Alex Wong/Getty Images

Every weekday of Donald Trump’s presidency has brought some fresh indignity to Sean Spicer, the beleaguered White House press secretary. On Tuesday, he faced the impossible task of defending the Trump administration’s position that an executive order banning refugees and most travel from seven predominantly Muslim countries was not, in fact, a “Muslim ban,” nor a “travel ban” at all.

“Well, first of all, it's not a travel ban,” Spicer insisted, referring to previous remarks made by Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, who also raised issue with the use of the word “ban” to describe the White House directive. “A ban would mean people can't get in. We've clearly seen hundreds of thousands of people come into our country from other countries. Sorry,” he added, describing the term as a false narrative created by the press.

Both Trump and Spicer have used the word “ban” previously to describe the president’s executive action. On Saturday, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, “We’re going to have a very, very strict ban,” and used the same word again Monday on Twitter. “If the ban were announced with a one week notice, the ‘bad’ would rush into our country during that week. A lot of bad ‘dudes’ out there!” he tweeted. Spicer himself told a group of students Monday that “the ban deals with seven countries,” The Huffington Post noted, and also referred to the executive order as a “90-day ban” the day before.

Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani has also said the president used the term “Muslim ban” specifically. “I’ll tell you the whole history of it,” the former New York City mayor told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro during an interview Saturday night. “So when [Trump] first announced it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ He called me up. He said, ‘Put a commission together. Show me the right way to do it legally.'" To get around the ban being described that way, Giuliani explained, “what we did was, we focused on, instead of religion, danger—the areas of the world that create danger for us ... which is a factual basis, not a religious basis. Perfectly legal, perfectly sensible. And that’s what the ban is based on.”

When NBC News’s Kristen Welker pointed to Trump’s use of the word “ban” in his tweet, Spicer blamed the media for putting the words in his mouth: “He’s using words that the media is using,” he argued, reiterating that a ban can’t be a ban if people are still being let into the country. “But those were his words,” a reporter shouted back.

Welker pressed her point: “The president himself called it a ban,” she continued. When Spicer said he understood, she asked the increasingly agitated press secretary: “Is he confused, or are you confused?”

“No, I'm not confused,” he shot back. “I think that the words being used to describe it are derived from what the media is calling this . . . [Trump] has been very clear that it is extreme vetting.”